


passersby

by pendules



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-19
Updated: 2011-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-15 18:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iker and Becks and ice-cream in LA. Though it's really not about the ice-cream. Just a simple conversation with lots of other things under the surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	passersby

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the FSC interview with David Beckham before the LA Galaxy v. Real Madrid match on the 7th of August, 2010. This takes place the day before the match.

It's strange getting recognised on streets whose names he doesn't know in a place halfway around the world from anywhere he'd call familiar. He doesn't think he could ever really get used to this. This, this part of it, was always for someone else. Someone who left (him) three years ago. Someone who showed him how to pose for the camera and who spent hours in his kitchen moving things around and failing miserably to teach him to cook anything remotely edible.

He sees him on the telly, in the papers, magazines, tabloids. But that - that's just a face. Just a smile. Lips, cheekbones, eyes, eyelashes that used to brush his face when he leaned in too close to whisper something conspiratorially in his ear. It's just a face. Just a snapshot. An image. An imprint of someone he used to know.

(But there are lots of those imprints. Lots of those that have never left after three years. Lots of those that he has hidden behind clothing or closed doors. In the back of drawers and on bottom shelves. There are, still, (invisible) marks on his back, his shoulders, his arms. Teeth-marks and fingernail-marks. Kisses that have never faded away. Fingerprint-shaped bruises on wrists and the inside of elbows, on hipbones and the base of his spine. Left-behind items of clothing that were never claimed. Presents he keeps mostly out of sight that still always, always attract his gaze. Rearranged ornaments he never returned to their original positions. It's a shrine, a snapshot of a memory that's been preserved: in his body, his house, his bedroom, his mind. And no one ever sees or knows.)

 

The memory threatens to falter now, because the real thing (or close to it) is right in front of him, and he is slowly changing things.

 

He's seen him, of course, a few times. They had drinks, they caught up, they didn't avoid things; it was as if they were continuing the same conversation they ended in 2007 ( _there are other things, other places for me; you won't even miss me, with the loads of stuff you'll be winning; i don't want you to miss me; it's smaller than we think, the world, and we're still in it: this world and our world, the one we hate and love; that's all that matters_ ). But this is different. He's different. It's like something is starting over. And Iker, Iker can't deal with that. Not ever. But he can't stay away either. At least not forever.

 

He gets a text and heads downstairs. He passes Xabi on his way up. He gives him a knowing look and says, "Be careful." Iker mouths, "Fuck off," at him, smiling.

David's there, smiling at him, looking brand-new like only he can. And he's saying, "I called you about a dozen times since you've been here. You're avoiding me."

"Well, I'm not avoiding you now." He decides to just give him the truth, this once, although the truth itself has changed.

"How about we get out of here?" David winks at him, and he just smiles and nods and follows him out of the hotel.

 

They set off down a side-street that David seems to know. He looks comfortable, relaxed, _at home_ (like he is everywhere in this small world). It's still pretty bright out and there are people on the sidewalks, but he just blends right in, and no one notices them. Iker, Iker still feels a bit off balance.

"It's weird, this place," he starts.

"You _would_ think that." He smiles a little smile, almost nostalgic.

"It just seems like the whole place and everyone living here have become just one gigantic cliché."

"Ah, but haven't we all, really?" He looks across at him for a moment, almost sadly now.

"How have you been doing? I mean, with the—"

"I'm - well, I'm getting there, I guess." Iker suspects this is the most hesitant, the most unsure, he'll ever be during this conversation.

But then he brightens again as if it never happened. "And you, of course, are doing fantastically," he continues.

"It's been better than average, I guess." And Iker has to smile as he says it.

"Well, that's all that matters."

 

They walk along for a few more minutes with David almost absently picking out their path. But then Iker stops abruptly.

" _David._ " And it's the first time he's said his name, really, for the night. Or for quite a while in general. (He remembers being so drunk after winning the league that the only thing he _could_ say was his name. Possibly with Spanish pronunciation. Possibly moaned into his neck while his hands grabbed at hair that was too short to really hold on to—) Part of him wants to never say it again.

"Yes. Iker?" He turns around, looking a little concerned.

"I just —" He stops. He can't say this. Not yet. He's not even entirely sure what it is he wanted to say. Then, "Where exactly are we going?"

"Oh, sorry. Right over here." And he points at a little corner shop a few metres in front of them. A very pink little shop.

David's already grabbed his arm and ushered him through the door before he realises he's in an ice-cream parlour.

 

"David. What?"

"This place is amazing," he says excitedly. "I found it a couple weeks after I came here. I don't think anyone else even knows it exists."

"Well, that can't actually be true."

"It's just - here. And it's open all night. It's good, I guess, if you want to be alone."

Iker would say, _I can't remember you ever wanting to be alone._ But he knows, even if David doesn't know that he knows. He knows about waking up in hotel rooms and not having a clue where he'd gone off to. And then, afterwards, pretending he hadn't noticed. There is, after all, only so much a smile can cover up. No one is ever really that beautiful all the time. Everyone has some ugliness to hide away.

David's been hiding things long before Iker learned how.

He smiles at him now and says, "So what are we having?"

 

"No, I mean it," he's saying five minutes later. "This is a really bad idea. José will kill me if he found out. And you - you've already been lazing around for four months—"

"Lazing around, have I been? I knew there was something left of the heartless bastard in there."

"I just meant—"

"Oh, shush. Now, come on, what are you getting? Or better yet, what was your favourite flavour as a kid?"

 _It's weird that you don't know that. It's weird that we don't really know each other as well as we think we do. But we know the important parts. Yes._

"Okay. But you cannot tell anyone about this. Ever. Okay?"

"Promise." David crosses his heart.

 

"Seriously?" David says, surveying the green mound Iker now has perched atop a cone.

"Hey. You asked."

David shakes his head in disbelief or amusement or both, and is then handed a huge chocolate cone of his own which he stares at ravenously.

"Come on."

"What? Where are we going?"

"Outside, of course. It's a lovely evening."

 

(Something he won't ever tell him: He tried to forget his voice. He starts watching all his interviews on mute. He learns to lip-read David Beckham. He tries to forget that hint of heartbreak in his voice that he always, always could hear even if no one else ever did. He tries to forget the way his eyes would look down or to the side for just a second like he was always seeking an escape, searching for a way out. He tries to look at him as just a face, tries to look at him the way the rest of the world does.

Now, now, he wants to replay all those videos with the sound turned all the way up. He wants to lie on his couch and close his eyes and absorb every syllable, every sound wave. He wants to find out all that he missed. Wants to find out everything. Wants to see the things in him that no one else ever saw. The things that were still there, always there, even when Iker wasn't.)

 

Iker keeps looking around nervously as if he's expecting someone from the club to jump out from behind a lamppost any second.

"Hey, relax." David looks like he's trying not to laugh at him. But he touches the inside of Iker's wrist for just a second in what he must think is a comforting gesture. And it is. Sort of. Iker breathes deeply for a second, and then trusts himself to say something.

"So, uh," he starts. "When will you be back, you think?"

"October, they're telling me. But I'm pushing for sometime next month." He grins.

"I feel like I'm young again," he continues. "Eager. Restless. Waiting for something."

But Iker thinks, _No, no, that's what growing older feels like. Something you've never wanted to do._ And that's just it; that's the problem. He doesn't know how to wait for things. He never has. Iker spent so much, _too_ much time waiting for _him_. It's unfair, so fucking unfair, that when you want something the most, and when you have to spend the most time waiting for it, is when you don't have much time at all. Iker's known this for a while. David's now starting to find out.

"That's a good thing, no?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I haven't wanted to play this much for a long time."

He's thinking, _Maybe that's the real reason I left in the first place._

 

"I - I don't know. I wish I kept in touch more. With you. With everyone." He knows that it's just as hard leaving memories behind as it is having to stare at them every day. He knows there's no escape. Not really.

"You told me to forget you." Iker's doing that thing again, that dangerous thing, telling the truth.

"I tell everyone that. I don't ever mean it." _There's a reason we do this. We don't want to be forgotten. Not ever. We're always okay with that part of it. More than okay._

"But seeing someone's face isn't really enough." And truth aside, he really didn't mean to say that.

He takes it as a joke though, in the way only David Beckham could. "You never were this sappy, mate."

"Maybe I am now," Iker challenges. And they're both smiling now.

 

Iker wants to tell him he's sorry, sorry for the injury, sorry he couldn't captain his team to the World Cup, sorry that he couldn't _watch_ his team win the World Cup. But he doesn't need to, he knows. David carries on. He keeps some sadness in his voice and a momentary wistful look in his eyes, but he carries on. He always does. Iker knows this too well.

 

"You're happier now, I think. Or you just let people see it more."

"Yeah. Maybe." Iker doesn't really know which one he's agreeing to.

There's a pause in which Iker swallows another mouthful of ice-cream. And then he speaks again.

"It's not just - you know. I mean, obviously, it's been great. But it's just that - everything came together at the same time," he finishes.

What he wants to say is: _I miss you. I miss you every day. Sometimes, there are a few minutes after I wake up when I don't think of you. Sometimes, there are more. Sometimes, I can make it to the bathroom or outside or to training. Sometimes, half a day passes. Sometimes, I get home and just sit on the couch for two hours in the dark thinking about your face (and I lied then; it's enough, it is, sometimes). It's been getting longer and longer more often. (Maybe that's how you know you're getting over someone.) But it always happens. I always miss you._

Iker licks a little ice-cream off the corner of his mouth, and David smiles, thinks, _There are times that I wish I never left. And then the moment passes._

 

The moment passes like they pass by each other now, when their lives and times coincide. They're just two people who had a four-year-long summer romance that eventually came to an end, like they all do.

(Iker wants to scrub the memories off his walls and the sweat and tears off his sheets. He wants to replace them with something else. Something new. Something real.)

 

"Hey, wait."

"What?"

"Just stay still," he says, pulling out his phone.

"What is it?"

"Just something to hold on to."

And he snaps a picture of them, with cones still in hand and Iker's smile almost but not quite matching David's, sitting under an umbrella at a table outside a very, very pink ice-cream parlour.

"Better not let anyone see that," David teases.

"I won't."

 

They walk back to the hotel and they don't say anything on the way.

 

"Good luck tomorrow," he says. And he doesn't smile, just looks directly at him, his eyes going soft. And Iker just looks back. For a second or more.

The he leans in, slowly, and presses a tiny kiss to Iker's cheek.

He turns to walk away, but before he does, he says one last thing.

"I'm glad you're smiling more, Iker."


End file.
